


Mutineers

by Merfilly



Series: Colony [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s05e20 The Wrong Jedi, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: The 501st took a vote, and mutiny it is!





	Mutineers

**Author's Note:**

> Many shouts-out to ilyena-sylph for this one. While she's not co-writing it with me (yet), she was a large part of why it exists from batting the idea around with me months ago.

Ahsoka struggled for only a moment before she realized the hands grabbing her belonged to none other than Fives and Jesse. She kept silent, as she had when they reached for her, rather than disturb whatever this was. She thought she should be protecting them from colluding with a known criminal, keep them safe from the firing line, but there was her master's nervous energy in the back of her head again. He was up to something, and so Ahsoka went limp and played the part of a captured prisoner.

They were in atmosphere and climbing before she finally broke her silence, looking from one to the other, both looking nervous and grim all in one. For Fives, that wasn't surprising, but Jesse was possibly their oldest and most reliable vod, having a batch prefix that was impossibly low. His nickname in the ranks was 'Old Man', and for him to be nervous was shocking to her.

"What's happening, Fives? Jesse?"

As the ranking officer, mostly because Jesse had refused all promotions, Fives answered her. "Sir, all due consideration and such, but we took a vote. And kriff the Order, kriff the Republic, all of it, if they think **you** of all people can ever turn on us or the Jedi themselves!" He then gave the half-grin, reaching up to rub his neck. "So we're mutinying. And kidnapping you. As well as the General. We'll figure out the rest when we hit the Rim."

Ahsoka just stared at him, trying to make sense of that. She knew a lot of the 501st had overcome the flash training, learned to think for themselves, but this was… excessive. "How are we getting there?" she asked rather than address her concerns over what they were potentially facing.

"We're stealing our ship," Jesse said, calming now that she wasn't fighting them over their choice. "Fleet was surface side, mostly. We locked the rest in the pods, and are going to jettison them as soon as we are ready to break orbit. The General has the hyperspace issue all plotted; we'll be jumping from orbit."

Ahsoka took in a deep breath, but if anyone could manage Coruscanti traffic enough to do so, it was Skyguy.

"Alright boys; let's do this."

* * *

'Doing this' entailed a jump in the opposite direction of where they wished to go, but they were not stupid enough to believe they could abscond with Republic property (ship and selves, as Pike quipped, and everyone knew he'd said it in honor of Hardcase making light of their status. Not a one of them failed to Remember their gunner in that moment, either) without some fail-safe being in place.

They brought the ship down on the moon of a gas giant with a barely breathable atmosphere, and went over her with a fine tuned comb, ripping out anything giving off a signal on Anakin's hastily crafted scanner. Their gear got the same work over—

— and then Anakin felt a phantom pain in his thigh, just where his chip had been cut out. With a snarl, he grabbed Kix and headed for medical, absolutely furious with himself for never having checked before. The conversation with Kix, once he had a full scan to look at, was more frustrating than he would've thought possible.

"What's that?"

"What's what, Sir?"

"That." The pointed tap on the screen magnified the small blot within the cranial scan.

"Let me consult our manual," Kix said, and Anakin's jaw tried to grind its way out of his skull. He hated when Kix or any of them referred to themselves as equipment, but he had learned it usually meant Anakin was up against a flash training issue. "Ahh, here, sir. It is a bio-feedback control, to bring our aggression levels to manageable levels and prevent another incident as with the prototypes."

Anakin snarled viciously and shook his head. "Try again, Kix. **Think** about what we are trying to do here, what you and the rest of the unit voted to do! Think about what Rex told you about the Zygerrians. Think about the horror stories Boil has shared about what he's learned of why so many Twi'lek females work in the entertainment field!"

Kix's brow crinkled, and Anakin actually felt a moment of sympathy for him behind his irritation; the poor vod'e were so brainwashed! But he could see as the man consciously overrode the voice of his trained knowledge to think critically, past the blocks on doing so in a non-combat manner.

Rex had stated that turning every situation into a combat scenario helped with that.

"It's… what we're looking for, sir?"

Anakin clapped a hand on his chief medic's shoulder and nodded. "Probably. But I'm going to need one, to study it, see what it can do, and how to stop it the best way for all of you."

Kix's jaw firmed and he activated a surgi-droid, programming it swiftly, before he lost his ability to fight the training screaming in his head to ignore the Jedi he trusted and respected with all of his heart. "It's going to be me, then, sir." He passed the control over, and Anakin looked at the programmed course of action. His eyebrow rose as he saw a critical miscalculation on the depth of the cut. He'd tell Kix later that the damned thing, or the training, had caused him to set the droid to kill him. It would be useful to get the medic completely stoked against the Sith that had to have sneaked it in.

Dooku had better stay very far from the 501st and Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin wasn't a great medic or healer, but once he had the droid sighted in on the blot in Kix's cranium, it was able to do everything needed to begin the process of saving his men from whatever plot the chip was. It would take them a slightly longer layover here, but they weren't budging until every man was clear of the things. He'd even be nice and put the evidence, instructions, and a data pad of what he found together to send to Aayla Secura. Her, he still trusted.

That couldn't be said for any member of the Council, even Obi-Wan, despite his fighting for Ahsoka. After all, Obi-Wan had used his emotions callously so recently, a reminder that proper Jedi didn't actually know how to love. Aayla, despite everything else, did show her love for her men, and knew what it was to be manipulated and brainwashed. She would be the best person to handle the situation.

* * *

Naos was actually all the way into Wild Space, beyond Tatooine and Ryloth both, just off the Corellian Run hyperspace lane. Anakin had heard of it when he was a kid, and the planet was livable. The lack of supplies had been a concern, until Anakin got a gleam in his eyes. A stop on Tatooine got them a slicer named Kitster, who helped them figure out where various smuggling stockpiles could be found. His other task was determining if there was a way to disable the chips, long-distance, and all just for the chance to keep out of the Hutt's way.

Supplies were less of an issue after three raids, and the local crime lords were all squabbling with Jabba the Hutt over having been attacked… supposedly by each other, as Anakin had planted evidence at each stockpile to incriminate the others. The most unpleasant part, aided and abetted by one half-size huntress, had been capturing a small bantha herd and getting them loaded in a bay, then tranqed for the rest of the ride to Naos. While there was plenty of native life on Naos to live off of, bantha were exceptionally adaptable to many ecologies and produced so many useful things that Rex had to agree with the Togruta's reasoning for bringing them.

Anakin crinkled his nose at that bay even after they unloaded the _Resolute_ , but he watched as the men surveyed the spot they had landed at, their engineer corps coming forward to analyze the native materials plus what they had brought in order to build a camp… no, not a camp. They were building a city, even as the pilots placed a sensor net through the system to give them as much warning as possible in case of attack… or pursuit.

One thing Ahsoka helped with as soon as they had a headquarters building was building and improving a good communication array to monitor what they could of the war. (Administration center, the vod'e reminded themselves and her, as they were not a military unit. Communal living with democratic authority delegated to certain people for certain things looked an awful lot like being an army to Ahsoka, though.) Anakin trusted Kitster, so she got him to help, trusting him with some codes and letting him teach her best intel analysts to keep them up on what they could intercept this far out.

Kitster ate up the responsibility and the chance to crack new codes, while teaching his new best friends all they could want on Hutt and Toydarian operations and codes. If they were monitoring those as well, he reasoned, the new colony would be safe enough. Everything went well in the first few weeks, and the small colony was beginning to plan their next moves, raids against slavers, expeditions to planets they had had high numbers of unaccounted dead on, and similar maneuvers when the sensors screamed that they were being invaded by a fleet.

Anakin and Ahsoka looked at each other, at Rex, and decided that, for better or worse, they had done something here worth dying for. The men had taken freedom for themselves, and begun making a home. They would fight to the last for this.


End file.
